Philosothon (Cambridge Faculty of Divinity)

Teachers Will Register a Team of 10 (with students from Year 9–13) from their School

There are only 8 tickets available, which are for teachers to register their group as a whole. Registration closes on Friday 5 June. Please email [email protected] with any questions.

What is a Philosothon?

A Philosothon is a friendly competition in which teams work together to reach a set of philosophically satisfying ideas. The model used for the event is a ‘community of inquiry’, where the idea is not to ‘attack’ or ‘defeat’ another person’s position, but to enable the group to move towards a critical understanding of different positions and arguments. You will be encouraged to ask questions of others in the group in order to help you probe deeper and try to understand and clarify the different viewpoints and arguments expressed within the group. You will be scored on the quality of your contributions and also for your ability to help others in your team contribute.

What will happen and what will I have to do?

You will be part of a team of 10 students that have been selected by your school from across different year groups. There is no expectation that you will have studied Religious Studies, or Philosophy and Ethics before or after participating the Philosothon. You will be asked to attend the event in your school uniform.

During the event, which will run from 10:00–3:30pm in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, you will take part in several twenty-minute Community of Inquiries. Each Community of Inquiry will be assigned a facilitator to assist the discussion and a judge, who will usually be a subject specialist, to award marks using certain criteria. Each group will be conducted in the Community of Inquiry model and will begin with “tuning in” and end with Phronēsis – practical wisdom resulting from the dialogue. You can find more about these events here: https://philosothon.co.uk

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Host or Publisher Faculty of Divinity